


Start Your Summer with a Bet

by Movie_Riggs (orphan_account)



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: But probably won't because that's how it always goes, F/M, I don't see nearly enough people shipping Billy and Heather, I gotta do everything don't I, Something that should probably turn into a multi-chapter fic, california au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:28:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25248421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Movie_Riggs
Summary: A glimpse at the life of California's twenty-somethings as they work summer jobs and look for opportunities to get laid.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove & Lucas Sinclair, Billy Hargrove/Heather Holloway (suggested), Billy Hargrove/Karen Wheeler (referenced), billy hargrove & tommy hagan
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2





	Start Your Summer with a Bet

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to get a glimpse inside the head of a (slightly nicer) version of Billy.

People love summer. A good deal of this love undoubtedly comes from the fact that summer equates to "no school" for kids and "vacation" for adults. But Californians love summer for more than just that. Summer is California's natural state of existence, and all native Californians have an understanding of this even if they cannot verbalize it.

Summer is for surfing and skateboarding, ice cream and sodas, beach volleyball and street basketball. Summer brings the water, the trees, the very air of California to life.

Billy Hargrove is not a sentimental person by any means, but even he feels fond of California and especially its summers. He keeps the windows of his Camaro rolled down from the last days of May to the first days of October to make sure he breathes every bit of Californian summer air he can.

He drives that Camaro to work a few days a week during summer. Last year he was a lifeguard at the beach. The year before that he was a stockboy at the supermarket. This year he is a trainer at the gymnasium.

From a practical standpoint, he likes this job the best. He gets to exercise all day long--meaning he is getting paid for doing something he would do anyway--and he doesn't have to sit in the sun and worry about fat kids drowning under a wave.

Plus, if he is being honest with himself, the gym is the best place for young single men looking for women. One might think it would be the beach, but that would mean one is not native to California. The women who go to the beach go there because they are already with men. Trips to the beach are like dinner and a movie in the Midwest: common first-date activities.

In contrast, very few women go to the gym with their boyfriends or husbands. They either go by themselves or with a friend or two.

Billy enters the gym and clocks in. The first person he works out with on Mondays is his little sister's (well, step-sister) boyfriend. At least, he's pretty sure they think they're dating. If Neil Hargrove were to ever catch wind of it, the Sinclair kid would be out on his ass and Max would be grounded for months. If Billy was as much of an asshole now as he had been in high school, maybe he would rat Max out. But she wasn't his responsibility anymore and he could care less whose mouth she stuck her tongue in. Besides, the Sinclair kid seemed cool enough. He had gotten a membership at the gym this summer so he could stay in shape and hopefully play some sports during his senior year.

The gym is one big room with workout machines and weights divided up based on category: cardio, core, legs, and arms. There are mirrors all around, something Billy never quite understood. Who decided everyone in the world wanted to watch themselves while they melted into a sweaty mess? He was okay with it personally, but he wasn't too skinny or too chubby. Actually, he could have been an underwear model at this point. They would probably make him cut his hair, though.

The far corner of the gym has three doors, one on one wall and two on the other. The one leads to another room, which is an indoor basketball court that could have been bigger, and the two are the men's and women's locker rooms.

Billy heads to the men's locker room. He drops his bag in his designated locker and closes it without locking it back. No one ever steals anything here, and even if they wanted to, he has nothing worth stealing.

He looks at himself in the mirror and ponders going shirtless for the whole day, but decides to leave his wifebeater on for now. He takes a leak, washes his hands and walks out.

He joins the other employees at the front desk. They are all roughly his age. The manager is a woman in her fifties, but she is a trusting person--maybe too trusting--and she stays in her office unless someone really needs her.

Billy supposes he would call his coworkers his friends. They are the people he ate lunch with every day for four years in high school, and ever since graduating, they see each other every summer because a couple of them like to carefully plan where they apply for jobs so they all get the same job and can goof off with each other like the old days.

Tommy H. is one of the couple who does the coordinating. Billy knows why. It doesn't take a genius to know why. Tommy H. is a follower, always has been. He spent half of high school following Steve Harrington and the other half following Billy. The poor guy never learned to think for himself. He just doesn't know how to operate if he isn't working with someone bigger and smarter than him.

Tommy's on-again, off-again girlfriend Carol is a bit more independent. Billy supposes she could have been comfortable working anywhere, but she likes working with Tommy because they can flirt all day and get each other warmed up for a nice fuck session in the locker room during their lunch break or after closing.

It is Nancy Wheeler who helps Tommy make sure as many of them work in the same place as possible. To na outsider looking in, this would be surprising. Nancy doesn't seem to fit in with the rest of them, and perhaps that is because she was never meant to. It was Steve Harrington who brought her into the circle when he started dating her. Nancy had seemed hesitant at first, probably because Steve had no intention of leading her best friend (some chick with glasses whose name Billy has long since forgotten) into the circle too. But for one reason or another, the change stuck. In fact, the most remarkable thing of all is that Nancy stayed in this circle even after Steve left.

There is another girl named Heather whom none of them knew in high school. She is a bit of a priss as far as Billy can tell and he doesn't particularly care to know anything about her now, either. She's got nice features, but that isn't enough.

"Heads up, gang," Carol says. "It is eight o'clock and we are officially open."

The trainers--Billy, Tommy H., Heather, and Nancy--take a few steps back from the desk (which Carol mans) and wait for their customers. Nancy does one-on-one training like Billy while Tommy H. and Heather usually work out with groups. Heather leads the yoga classes at eight, nine, eleven and two o'clock.

Billy can see out the glass door that Sinclair is coming down the sidewalk on his bike. Right on time, as always. He is just about to split apart from the group when Tommy H. claps his hand on Billy's shoulder.

Billy looks at the dumbass grin on the smaller man's freckled face and rolls his eyes. _Here we go_.

"New summer, my friend," Tommy says. "Care to start it off with a bet?"

"Don't we always?" Billy replies with undisguised sarcasm. Not that it matters. Tommy isn't smart enough to pick up on sarcasm.

"The stakes..." Tommy thinks a moment. "Twenty dollars."

"Twenty dollars," Billy repeats. He wonders if Tommy will ever change. He supposes it doesn't matter. The guy may be annoying, but Billy can't pretend to hate showing off. Tommy looks to his left at Heather and Billy's right at Nancy. Neither girl cares much about what is being said, but they are still listening. Nancy has a little smirk on her face because she knows from previous summers where this is going.

Tommy lays down the rules. "You have to have carnal knowledge...of a female this time..."

"Ha-ha," Billy interrupts.

Tommy laughs agreeably at his own joke. "...on the premises."

"On the premises," Billy repeats, in the same light tone he repeated "twenty dollars."

_I have to fuck a girl inside the gym or pay Tough Guy over here twenty bucks_.

"How much time do I have?" he asks.

Tommy H. thinks for a second, or at least looks like he's thinking. "How long did you have last summer?"

"I don't remember, but I do remember that all the time I needed as a week." Billy grins, remembering the sweet lovemaking. She had been an older woman, one of his favorite types. In fact, she was and is Nancy's mom, but as far as he knows Nancy still has no idea. That had been a hell of a good summer, meeting Karen Wheeler in motel rooms and screwing her socks off. The great thing about a woman like that is the desperate need for excitement because her deadbeat husband won't so much as kiss her on the lips anymore. Karen was willing to let Billy do almost anything to her, and once Billy had figured this out, he had indulged every kink he thought he might have, including doing it right out in the open on the beach (albeit in a semi-secluded area). Sure, most women went to the beach with their boyfriends or husbands, but as always there were exceptions to the rule and he found that exception pretty quick. The eagle eye view he had had from his lifeguard's chair was no doubt a help.

"Well, then I think I shouldn't give you more than a week," Tommy says. "In other words, by this time next Monday."

Billy clicks his tongue. "I don't know, it just doesn't seem fair. For you, I mean."

"Two weeks, then?"

Nancy groans. "That helps _him_ , you dipshit," she tells Tommy.

"Oh, right." Tommy frowns. "Less than a week?"

"Let's compromise and call it a week and a half." Billy claps Tommy H. on the shoulder, hard enough for it to sting, just because he can. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a customer."

Billy leaves his coworkers (or friends, he supposes) to meet Sinclair at the door. He exchanges a casual greeting with the young boy.

"Remind me what day it is?"

"Cardio," Lucas Sinclair says.

"And I assume you don't want to go jogging around the block?"

"Hell, no." Lucas grins. "It's you and me, on the court."

"Good deal." Billy can hold his own at basketball. They head to the far corner and go through the door that leads to the court.

It is later in the day, during the start of lunch break, that Billy and Tommy start talking again.

"Whaddaya thinking, Billy-boy?" Tommy asks as he watches the eleven o'clock yoga class--mostly thirty and forty-something moms--file out the door.

This of course translates to: who's it gonna be? And while that isn't part of the bet, Billy sees no reason not to tell Tommy which woman (or women) he was thinking of nailing.

The problem is that Billy is coming up dry. He would never admit this out loud, but it is true. What girls who had the three L's--good Looks, good Laugh, and the potential for good Loving--hasn't he already been with? The number would have been a lot higher if they were still in high school. But by now, at least half of their graduating class has left town with no intention of returning, not even for summer.

In short, the clearest options Billy saw in front of him aren't too appealing for a variety of reasons.

There is that friend of Harrington's whose name he can't remember. She works with Steve at the ice cream shop across the street. But Billy is pretty sure he heard a rumor that she is a lesbian.

There is Carol, whom he slept with once or twice during one of the "off again" times between her and Tommy, but they are "on again" for now. Probably for the whole summer.

Of course there is Nancy, but for taboo reasons Billy doesn't want to go that route given whom he fucked for twenty dollars last summer. It is too bad, really, because Nancy has that energy about her that says, "I act like I've got a stick up my ass, but in secret I want to get railed in the ass." Billy thinks that's what she needs: some guy to come along and give it to her dirty (it's what Karen needed, after all). She is probably waiting for a guy exactly like that, and that's why she hasn't been with anyone since Steve.

Billy's last option...at least, his last easily accessible option...is Heather Holloway.

He nearly slaps his own face for considering the thought. Heather is a stuck-up, entitled, richy little priss. That doesn't mean she isn't cute. She is. She has a good body; that much is clear from two summers of working with her and seeing her in a swimsuit and now yoga pants or occasionally short shorts. She has a nice face with big, innocent dark eyes and equally dark, curly hair. Yes, she is cute, probably pretty. But even if she has ever said a direct word to Billy about something other than work, Billy is sure it wouldn't have been anything worth listening to. It's her voice. Nails on a chalkboard, that's what it is. "Haha, look at me, I'm a conceited bitch who's better than all of you!"

Billy realizes Tommy H. is still waiting for an answer. He puts on a smug look and says, "I'm still thinking about it."

"Better think fast," Tommy laughs.

"Don't you worry," Billy says. "I've got a whole week and a half."

That would be more than enough time.


End file.
